To Love a Cursed Cat
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [AU] He was the Cat-Cursed, the King's prisoner pet, lower than the most despicable men until rebels set him free to see how the kingdom will be upturned. But if it is, he doesn't see. He finds a girl that pities his plight and a garden amidst the rubble instead. And maybe even a cure to the curse, with a love potion and a bottle of wine and a witch...


A/N: Written for the Green Room 2015 (Rlt), challenge #9 - the passion potion challenge, and for the Diversity Writing Challenge, d26 - write using the in medias res device.

* * *

 **To Love a Cursed Cat**

 **.**

'Water.' Tohru laughed. Her voice sounded like the wind chimes his mother used to have in the house…back when there was a mother, and a house. But the wind chime had never had the undertone his mother's voice had had, never had the voice of trying too hard, or pretending too much. And it didn't have the suggestion, buried deep down, that something was going to happen to rip even that fragile, pretentious, life away. And that had happened all too quick. That life with his mother was pretty much a dream, under the years of captivity.

'Water,' she repeated. 'Only water. I have a best friend who's a witch, remember?'

He remembered.

 **.**

Not many people would love a Cursed, and nobody at all would love him when even the King forsook him. He was a young king, but king nonetheless and through power of right as well as blood. The Cursed were all brought upon him and he knew how it clung to each of their souls, what it turned them in to under the shadows of moonless, starless nights and dark clouds.

And he was the unluckiest of all the Cursed. Thirteen animals and there was a hierarchy between them. Perhaps the legend it was based off was truth, or just convenience. But the Rat was the first to reach the God for the banquet and the doors were shut on the Cat. And so Yuki lay at the King's feet and he, Kyo, was locked away and left to rot.

He should have rot, but luck or something else had given him a way out.

 **.**

Below the prisoner's cells was his special cell, and everyone knew it. For the prisoners, it was the knowledge that they hadn't quite reached rock bottom yet. For the rebels who liked causing trouble, it was the chance to cause some trouble for the king – because there must be a very good reason all Cat-Cursed were buried so deep, so far away from life.

So one day they figured out a way to blast the floor and all the protections layering it and he crawled out into the sunlight and was left to his own devices.

Because although they wanted to see why he was so important, they didn't want to risk being on the wrong side of him.

Not that he was anything but a starved prisoner getting his first glimpse of sunlight.

 **.**

Luckily, nobody actually knew what he looked like except the King and the other Cursed, so once he'd escaped the castle area, he was no different to any other prisoner. Except they had some world knowledge and he had absolutely nothing. He'd been imprisoned since birth after all, and been told stories by the King's echoing voice through the pipes that could be true or false.

And ignorance did not make the people of the world look favourably on him, even if they were ignorant themselves of the curse he carried. In ignorance, he was no better than a light-headed beggar, asking for resources that couldn't be spared much less to those who didn't help in return.

It was a silly cycle, once Kyo had grasped it. Wouldn't it be better if the people gave something of their own free will then let it be stolen from them? Maybe they could ask for something in return. Maybe they could have a mutual relationship, like the little girl who swept the floor of the bakery or something like that. A lot of places were far more filthy. And it couldn't be too difficult, intellectually, to learn how to sweep. And surely the starving people would prefer hard work to stealing, to risk the beatings when they were caught.

Kyo knew at least that he'd do anything to avoid a beating.

 **.**

That was the only time the King came down to him. Otherwise, it was his echoing voice from the chambers, where he couldn't "smell the filth of the curse" or so he said. It was the king's favourite past time. Sometimes the Cow-cursed came – the cow who'd been tricked by the rat in the earlier legends, who it was said blamed the cat, "if only the cat had been smarter…" as though the cow wasn't to blame for its own foolishness in the legend… Why, if the cow hadn't been tricked, the cat would be free. If anything it should be the other way around, Kyo thought, but nothing was fair when the Cat-cursed was concerned. Until he was no longer concerned. And that meant dead until he was set free to cause chaos in the King's castle, amongst the Cursed.

He wondered how long it would be before he either died or they found him.

 **.**

His red hair was an anomaly, until it went black from grime. It was lucky, because when the King's men scanned the crowds, they saw no tell-tale red that told him the master's prisoner pet was there. It would take more careful eyes than that.

And he followed the other prisoners for a time, learning their ways: stealing, sleeping under wheelbarrows where they wouldn't be seen, and then he separated from them and went on his own way. Still, he tried to ask around. The King had taught him speech, if only so he'd understand the other's words and be cut more deeply as a result. But he used that speech now, though there was only the occasional crumb and dismissal to show for it.

Until, for once, a girl offered him something instead of him having to ask, and he took it eagerly, hungrily – almost animalistic.

And he scared her away, appearing like that beast over the bones of his catch, devouring the roll and its contents and exhuming that awful smell that said he wasn't human at all…

 **.**

The next day, there was a different woman, and she'd also brought something for him to eat. This woman introduced herself as a witch, and spewed a bunch of stuff about waves and impulses that Kyo confessed he didn't understand at all.

'I didn't think you would,' said the woman. She didn't smile, but she'd given him a fruit and so she had to be kind. Kinder than everybody else, at least. Except the girl from the previous day. She'd smiled as she'd given him something. Smiled until he'd changed, until hands became paws and straight back became hunched like a beast on all fours. Then her eyes had widened in fear, in horror. Then she'd fled and left the basket in her haste.

Kyo had a full stomach that night, and also a guilty conscience. But there'd be no point in seeking her out, he thought. Not in such a busy place. And not in his state, his condition. He'd scared her away, just like the King had always said he would.

But he couldn't tell a stranger that, if things didn't come to such a state again. As a witch, she might know of the Curse. She might drag him to the King and that would be the end.

Should he even care?

He should. He couldn't bear the thought of returning to that prison now. Even like this, worse than animal, life.

'I can help you overcome your curse,' the witch said, after a brief pause. 'Are you interested?'

She was a witch. Maybe she really could. But the King said…

'The King says what suits him,' the witch said calmly. 'He keeps all of the same wave together so his own fluctuating ones are maintained.'

Kyo didn't understand that either. Or the implications. That they weren't maintained now. That something might happen.

But she might heal the curse. She might.

Then he really would be able to see that girl again, if only to apologize for frightening her like he had.

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes. Help me.'

 **.**

'Love potion?' he asked. They were in the witch's shop, and there actually wasn't much there. Some medicines, she explained. And a fire that was constantly kept by a little boy. And a woman in the corner with an axe.

'Arisa,' said the witch, nodding at the other. 'More firewood.'

Arisa looked long and hard at Kyo, before obeying.

'You'll want to be careful after this,' the witch commented. 'Arisa is quite…protective.'

'Of who?' Kyo was on edge now. 'And why a love potion?' He didn't know anything about them, but "love" was something he was incapable of. The King said so.

'They're quite versatile, you know. It can make you love a person, a thing, a place…life itself.'

She pulled another bottle off the shelf. 'And this one's wine,' she said.

He'd stolen wine before, though it was easier to steal the water. But wine had a certain taste water lacked. A taste, and a soft, slumbering feeling. Water just made things crisp. Wine dulled.

'Why wine?' he asked.

'Why not?' she asked. 'As for the payment, you'll be working for a friend of mine. She'll feed you too so be sure to work extra hard.'

That was fine with Kyo. More than fine. A dream come true. No, more than that as well.

 **.**

The friend of the witch happened to be called Tohru – and the same girl who'd given him food the first time, and he passed out on the spot. It might have been the wine helping things along. When he woke up, he was in a comfortable pallet and the girl was singing as she hung the clothes up outside.

He wondered if he should try to make a run for it, but his head was still filled with fog, and the girl smiled at him again, as though he'd never scared her, and then showed him the garden that needed weeding.

That was easy work, though tough and it scratched at his hands. It was no worse than what he'd done to himself, and Tohru wrapped his hands up later for him. Her touch was soft, gentle. It made him want to purr except there was a fog still stuck in his head and it only grew stronger when he drank his potion and wine again that dinner.

 **.**

At first, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to be falling in love with, but then he figured it was the girl. She showed him lots of things. The garden as it grew more beautiful, and how to make it even more so. Her singing as she hung up the clothes and tidied the house and picked fruits and dug out vegetables and took them to the market with him carrying the heavier things. The stars in the night sky he'd never looked at because he'd been so busy looking down. The clouds he'd never seen because it wasn't as bright as the sun and before that it had only been a dark ceiling and a window that gave light but nothing else.

And then, one day, she asked him: 'Are you happy?'

He said yes because he wasn't quite sure what happy was, but when her smile was like a rainbow she'd shown him once, he decided he wanted her to smile like that forever.

 **.**

He finished the bottle of the wine, and two more, though each tasted a little different, a little lighter, and his head was filled with less fog. He learnt other things too: table manners, so he wouldn't fall on his food like an animal again – and his stomach didn't gnaw with hunger anymore either.

He also learnt to control his emotions. Hard work in the garden – and harder so Tohru could be spared a bit of her own work load, and trying to keep that smile on her face. It taught him patience well. And Tohru taught him the rest, manners as well as a village girl could manage them.

He kept on drinking the love potion, and learning how to be human in a human world.

But the curse was still there, and sometimes he thought about it.

 **.**

Tohru sent him to the witch – who she called Hana but whose name was Saki of the Hanajima family – and he asked her about the curse.

'The waves are sleeping,' was the reply. 'Sleeping, but not gone.'

'Can you make them go?'

But she shook her head. 'I cannot.' She paused, then said. 'Tell Tohru she can stop with the potion now.'

He passed on the message and Tohru nodded, but gave him the potion at dinner.

He stared at the cup.

'It's water,' she said. 'Truthfully, it's always been water. Hana's strange like that.'

Water. He knew water. Water kept him alive in that prison. Water was what he stole the most once he escaped. Water was what the heavens occasionally dropped on them, what made the flowers bloom and give fruit. But the taste was different. He knew the taste of water.

'It's water from the stream,' she explained. 'That irrigates the plants. Tastes different than the water from the rain, or the wells. But water of all sorts helps us appreciate life. It's a love potion in that sense, a potion to teach us to love life, to keep on living – to survive and do more than survive.'

He stared at her.

'There are other love potions,' Tohru continued. 'With plants that make you burn, or make you lose yourself in fog – like wine, I think Hana says. But those are for other things. Not for a poor boy who doesn't yet know how beautiful the life is, how it's more than waiting and begging for food and water and living, day by day.'

'You were scared.' He was still trying to make sense of the words. The witch hand come – because Tohru had asked her to. The witch had helped him because of Tohru. Because of Tohru.

'I was,' she said. 'But I also pitied you. And I saw…you were scared as well. There was something you were struggling with. Some impulse.'

The Curse.

'The wine relaxed you. Just in case you got worked up again. And with that, I showed you this world. Is it beautiful?' Her eyes were earnest, though she smiled like she already knew the answer.

'Water,' he said, scarcely able to believe it. Such a magical thing, and it was just water. And wine, but wine had spoken for its part in the tale, wrapping his head in fog, dulling his instincts so he could learn to control them himself. 'Such a simple thing…' And the curse was tamed with it. Such a simple thing.

And the King…he wondered if the King had known.

But it didn't matter. Or…

'Can…I stay?' Here, with you.

She beamed. 'Of course you can. Just like we've been.'

'Just like we've been,' he agreed, because it was more than a dream come true. It was a garden, a heaven on earth for him. A beautiful gift that the pity of a young girl had brought him in a world where everyone else turned their faces, whether he was cursed or ex-prisoner or beggar.

Now, he was none of those things, and he was…happy.


End file.
